Field of the Invention
Schools and colleges who have more applicants than they have student capacity, desire to select from all the applicants, those who are most likely to succeed.
Associations or governmental agencies who wish to grant professional licenses or establish levels of expertise need to determine applicants' degree of knowledge of their specialty.
Employers, via Civil Service or otherwise, wish to promote those employees who can demonstrate the greatest competence in one or more job related subject areas.
All of these groups utilize multiple choice tests generated by testors to aid in the performance of their selection, licensing, granting awards, or promotion.
The testee reads each question, reads the alternative answers provided by the test maker, selects the one he believes is most nearly correct, notes the identifier associated with the answer and the question number and with a pencil or marker, places a mark on the answer sheet for the question number and at the identifier position corresponding to his answer choice. When all the questions have been answered or when the allotted time has elapsed, the testee turns in his question sheet and answer sheet and leaves the place of testing.
He then has agonized weeks, or even months, before his score is reported to him. In the meantime, he may be obligated to make decisions regarding his future actions, which he could have made better had he known his score at the end of the test. That is an interest of the testee.
By contrast, the interest of the testor is to retain the contents of the test questions and answers confidential. The testor wishes this confidentiality to reduce the cost of designing subsequent tests and to make all testees as nearly equal as possible by denying to all prior knowledge of the test questions and the answers and the logic on which the answers are based.
This invention is directed toward the satisfaction of both the interests of the testor and the testee.
The invention is directed to the mechanisms for testing intellectual capacity.
It is further directed toward tests having multiple questions, each one of which is of the multiple choice type: that is, of the type having a series of possible answers, one of these being best or most correct.
It is further directed toward answer sheets for these tests which, without disclosing the key, directly or indirectly inform the testee the score achieved at the conclusion of the test.
It is further directed toward answer sheets that use latent image techniques for directing the testee to scoring sites, the location of which depends on the correctness of his answers to the prior questions.
It is further directed to scoring sites which are integral with the answer matrix.
It is further directed to scoring sites which are external to the answer matrix.